As a child, beauty is simple, our ideals are simple. We find the lifelike, vividly detailed Da Vinci more appealing than surrealist Dali. We find the things that are pleasing to the eye beautiful. We see perfection as an ideal like getting a 100% on a test, or being eloquent, intelligent, graceful.
Now I realise that perfection isn't quite as simple as all that. Something that's too perfect actually loses some of its beauty, some of its perfection. Its flawlessness is an imperfection, and it makes it less interesting, less appealing. It's like the way master potters sometimes purposefully include flaws in their work. They could make perfect pots, the ideal pot, easily, yet they choose not to, because they see that perfection is also about the acknowledgement of flaws. In the same way, I realise that as much as striving to live up to the ideals of perfection, being perfect is also about the acknowledgement and acceptance of what is not perfect.
Actually, perfection is like dance. I once said that the most important aspect of ballet is balance. It's true for perfection. And balance doesn't mean taking the middle road, but allowing a dynamic equilibrium to occur as a result of the constant battle between the two extremes, striving for perfection, and your own imperfections.
A chronicle of nose growth
'...changing the form of one's mission's almost as difficult as changing the shape of one's nose:
they are, each, in the middle of one's face and one's character - one has to begin too far back.'
― Henry James. The Portrait of a Lady.
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